Читать книгу: «Funny Stories Told by the Soldiers», страница 2

PA WAS THE GENERAL

The young subaltern, who was a son of a general and never omitted to rub in that fact, was taking a message from the general to the gunners.

“If you please,” he said to the major, “father says will you move your guns.” The major was in an irate mood. “Oh!” he rejoined, “and what the blazes does your mother say?”

TOUGH ON GOMPERS

Kerensky kissed Arthur Henderson, the British labor politician, as the American Labor Mission calls him, and all England gasped. Kerensky is coming to this country. He may want to kiss Secretary Wilson or even President Wilson. This has led an anonymous poet to suggest that the President put his greetings into a song, and to furnish him with the song, as follows:

 
“Salute me only with thy fist,
And don’t attempt to buss me;
The very thought of being kissed
Is quite enough to fuss me.
If you must kiss, try it on Gompers —
He hasn’t been kissed since he wore rompers.”
 

HAD THE RIGHT DOPE

The more things the draft officials do to baseball here the better it flourishes in London, according to Richard Hatteras, of that thriving community, who was recently in New York. Mr. Hatteras says the game is getting a firm hold on every nationality in the British capital.

“Why, recently,” quoth he, “I saw a game in which East Indians were playing. One of these approached the plate at a crucial moment and cried aloud:

“‘Allah, give thou me strength to make a hit.’

“He struck out.

“The next man up was an Irishman. He spat on the plate, made faces at the pitcher, and yelled:

“‘You know me, Al!’ He made a home-run.”

TELL THIS NOT IN BOSTON

An American boy had his first experience in the first line of trenches under fire, and an American woman met him.

“Well, boy,” asked the woman, “what was it like? Pretty awful experience, wasn’t it?”

“Awful?” grinned the Sammee. “Funniest thing you ever saw.”

“Funny?” echoed the woman, amazed. “Why, what in the world do you mean?”

“Those beans! Why – ” and he went off into a gale of laughter. “Of course you don’t know. But cook had made an enormous pot of beans for the boys and, say, they did smell some good. But they were too hot and so cook put them on the edge of the trench to cool off. Just then the Germans let go some shells and one hit that pot square. And it didn’t do anything to those beans. Honestly, ma’am, it simply rained beans for an hour!”

THE MESSAGE WAS SOBER, ANYHOW

General Sir Henry Rawlinson, Sir Douglas Haig’s “right-hand man,” is rather fond of relating a story concerning a major who, sent to inspect an outlying fort, found the commander intoxicated. He immediately locked him up; but the bibulous one managed to escape, and, making his way to the nearest telegraph office, dispatched the following message to no less a personage than the colonial secretary: “Man here, named – , questions my sobriety. Wire to avert bloodshed.”

HE HADN’T FINISHED

They had brought him in very carefully, the husky but femininely gentle stretcher bearers, for he was nothing but a kid after all, with a complexion like a girl’s and with pathetically pleading eyes. He was crying in his hospital bed when the correspondent came across him and stopped to investigate.

“Are you in great pain?” the newspaper man sympathetically asked.

The lad looked into the other’s eyes and nodded with a choking sob.

“Where does it hurt?” the correspondent pursued.

“It ain’t that,” was the reply; “it’s because they yanked me out of the scrap when I still had ten rounds left.”

THE OOZING OF THE COONS

Negro Sergeant – “When I say ‘’Bout face!’ you place de toe of yo’ right foot six inches to de reah of de heel of yo’ left foot and jus’ ooze aroun’.”

SHE WAS IN UNIFORM

First Officer (in spasm of jealousy) – “Who’s the knock-kneed chap with your sister, old man?”

Second Officer – “My other sister.”

NO CHALLENGING OUT OF HIS CLASS

Sergeant (surprising sentry) – “Why didn’t you challenge that man who just passed?”

Newest Recruit – “Why, that’s Kayo Hogan, sergeant, and he’s got all o’ ten pounds on me!”

CALLING HIM SISSY?

The Fag – “Oh, I’d go to the war quick enough, but mother wouldn’t like me to; and I’ve never disappointed her since the day I was born.”

The Snag – “Well, if she was hoping for a daughter, I’m sure you’ve done your best to console her.”

HOW DISAPPOINTED HE’LL BE

Scotch Warrior from Palestine (whose baby is about to be christened, and who has a bottle of Jordan water for the purpose) – “Eh, by the way, meenister, I ha’e brocht this bottle – ”

Minister – “No’ the noo, laddie! After the ceremony I’ll be verra pleased!”

AMERICAN HUMOR IN FRANCE

The sense of humor of the American is a joy to the French, who miss this quality sadly in the English. A young French woman was conducting two young American officers around Versailles. When they got in the park the French girl said: “Do you know that the French have a pretty saying, ‘The smaller the ivy leaf, the dearer the love?’ So I want each one of you to find the tiniest leaf possible and send it to the one that’s waiting at home.” The men set out, and the first man came back with a perfectly enormous leaf, which he told the girl he had plucked for his mother-in-law! The second officer came back with a leaf even larger and, when asked what loved one was to have that tiny leaf, he said: “Why, this is for the Kaiser!”

SNOBBERY SQUELCHED

On seeing the haughty aristocrat about to disturb a seriously wounded soldier, the Red Cross nurse in charge interposed.

“Excuse me, madam,” she said, “but – ”

She was rudely interrupted by Lady Snobleigh, who cried:

“Woman, you forget yourself. I’m very particular to whom I speak.”

“Oh,” quietly answered the nurse, “that is where we differ. I’m not!”

BLASTED HOPES

“Where is the new recruit?”

“Well, sir, since he went, an hour or two ago, to sew on a button with guncotton, no one seems to have seen anything of him.”

PROFITABLE AUTHORSHIP

The Girl – “And can you manage on your army pay, Phil?”

The “Sub” – “Hardly; but I do a bit of writing besides.”

The Girl – “What kind of writing?”

The “Sub” – “Oh, letters to the guv’nor!”

THE “LONG, LONG TRAIL” OVER THERE

Paris, Nov., 1918. – In the logging camps and sawmills, in barracks and on the drill grounds, in camps and on the march, in “Y” and Red Cross huts, at all hours of the day and night, wherever in France the Yank crusaders were at work, I have heard these lines sung, hummed, and whistled:

 
“There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And a white moon beams.
There’s a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true,
Till the day when I’ll be going down
That long, long trail with you.”
 

Wherever a piano found its way into the American lines someone was sure to be playing this chorus; and, dodging in and out of a convoy along the rutted and winding hillside roads in the zone of operations, in drizzle and mud and low flung clouds, one was certain to hear some camion load of lusty doughboys going to the “Long Trail.”

But it remained for H. A. Rodeheaver, Billy Sunday’s trombone expert, to put a new touch to it. He put the “longing” into the long trail with a dash of Sundayesqueness that smeared sawdust all over the long trail.

“Rodey,” as the soldiers call him, has been singing his way through the American camps in France and emulating his picturesque master, when opportunity afforded, by laying down a metaphorical “sawdust trail” and inviting the boys to hit it again in their hearts.

It was quite remarkable how many hands went up in every camp and barracks and hut when he asked them how many had attended a Sunday revival back home. Then he started singing the songs they heard at these meetings, usually beginning with “Brighten the Corner Where You Are.”

He has just the quality of voice that got down deep over here, when the night was dark and damp and the dim light but half illuminated the place, and the boys naturally were letting their thoughts fly back home. They warmed up to him, for he’s a good scout, according to their way of thinking, and the first thing they knew he was asking them to call for any song they would like to hear. About the first voice that responded called for the “Long, Long Trail.”

“All right, men,” he said, with a sincere smile, and his magnetic face, beneath the wavy black hair, seemed to exude a hypnotic fascination. He nodded to his pianist and they started. The barracks, or hut, or camp resounded with the “Long Trail.”

“Fine, fine,” beamed Rodey from the rough board platform. “You know, men, that’s a mighty fine piece of music. Let’s sing it again; now, all together,” and the sound swells a little higher this time.

“Once more,” and Rodey waved his arm in lieu of a baton.

The sea of faces brightened perceptibly, even under the dim lights.

“Now, men,” said Rodey, “just sing that chorus over again and I’ll try the trombone.”

That trombone did the business. Rodey gets a sort of combination alto and tenor harmony out of that old trombone that brings the home folks right into the meeting.

“Now, men, once more, very softly,” and he played the harmony plaintively and fetchingly.

He’s got ’em, and the moment has arrived for sprinkling the sawdust.

“Before we go on with our little program, men,” he said, “let us just bow our heads for a minute in prayer and ask God to help us make the good fight, help us to do the work we came over here to do like men.” The men bowed their heads and he added:

“Just before we ask God’s blessing on these brave men, if there is a boy out there who feels that he has not been living quite as he knows his mother would like to have him live, if there is a boy out there who feels in an especial way the need of God’s help at this hour, will he please raise his hand.”

The place was very still. A hand went up way in the back.

“Yes,” Rodey said. “God bless you, boy.”

Then another and another, and soon scores of hands were held up, while they had their heads bowed.

Then Rodey prayed one of those conversational prayers, and he made it a personal appeal for each one of the boys whose hands had gone up.

It was not Rodey’s plan to send the boys back to their barracks with only seriousness and longing in their heads. He’s one of the most adroit handlers of an audience in Europe. He’d got the main idea planted and now he broke into smiles and there was an infectious laugh in his voice.

He was again talking to red-blooded men who were going out to fight. So he told a few corking stories, humorous but clean, and got down to them instead of talking over them. He was one of ’em. He wanted to send them away with a good taste in their mouths.

Dunbar’s “When Melinda Sings” he does to perfection. Once in awhile he pulls the “Hunk o’ Tin” parody on the Kipling poem.

Then they sing some more, both democratic music and old hymns, and finally they all stand up, after he has launched a two-minute patriotic talk that thrills, and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Rodey never has a set program. He sizes up each new audience with a glance and in two minutes knows about what line of entertainment he ought to give them. If it’s a crowd that likes good stories, they get it. If it is a meeting that likes a Bible talk, they get that, and the great Sunday himself hasn’t much on his pupil in that line. But he never lets a crowd get away with a solemn face. He leads them up the hill and down the hill, and finally sends them back to the blankets feeling refreshed, inspirited, and cheerful.

And when Rodey hit a camp of Negro troops – man, O man! what he did to them!

He thinks the war has been a holy war, a war of crusaders against the terrible Huns, and wants them beaten to a standstill. He insists on the knockout punch, and believes the world will be a better world for everybody after Fritz and his gang have been completely chastized. – Charles N. Wheeler, in The Chicago Tribune.

HIS OWN PERSONAL WAR

General Leonard Wood tells the story of a captain to whom was assigned a new orderly, a fresh recruit. “Your work will be to clean my boots, buttons, belt, and so forth, shave me, see to my horse, which you must groom thoroughly, and clean the equipment. After that you go to your hut, help to serve the breakfast, and after breakfast lend a hand washing up. At eight o’clock you go on parade and drill till twelve o’clock – ”

“Excuse me, sir,” broke in the recruit, “is there anyone else in the army besides me?”

WHEN TOMMY LAUGHS

There are many bright lines in the soldiers’ letters home, as Punch and other papers note.

“A clergyman recently gave a lecture on ‘Fools’ at the ‘hut’ back of our station,” writes a boy from the Somme. “The tickets of admission were inscribed, ‘Lecture on Fools. Admit one.’ There was a large audience.”

And from Calais comes this:

“You will note with interest and tell the shirkers they’re missing something here. The ‘G’ came off the big sign east of the station here and we now read: ‘The only English love makers in the city.’”

ONE OF THOSE IRISH BULLS

The recruit from Ireland spent his leave in England. Asked on his return to the front what he thought of the place, he said:

“Faith, London is a great city; but it’s no place for a poor man unless he has plenty of money.”

WHEN GERMANY SALUTED A PIG

A Belgian farmer saved his bacon in an unusual way. He heard that the Germans were coming, so he killed and dressed his one pig, cleaned it, put it into his bed with only a part of the underface exposed, and put a lighted candle at each side of the bed. When the Germans arrived an officer entered the house, went into the room, saw what he believed to be a member of the family laid out for burial, saluted and went out!

AND SO IT PROVED

Arthur Train, the novelist, put down a German newspaper at the Century Club, in New York, with an impatient grunt.

“It says here,” he explained, “that it is Germany who will speak the last word in this war.”

Then the novelist laughed angrily and added:

“Yes, Germany will speak the last word in the war, and that last word will be ‘Kamerad!’”

WASHINGTON GETS THESE, TOO

They have some exceptional letters in the London “Family Separation” office, which looks after the families of soldiers at the front. These are all actual letters received:

“Dear Sir – You have changed my little boy into a little girl. Will it make any difference?

“Respectfully yours,

” – .“

“My Bill has been put in charge of a spittoon. Will I get more pay?” [“Platoon” was meant.]

“I am glad to tell you that my husband has been reported dead.”

“If I don’t get my husband’s money soon I shall be compelled to go on the streets and lead an Imortal life.”

“Dear Sir – In accordance with instructions on paper, I have given birth to a daughter last week.

“Truly yours,

” – .“

BLACK MAGIC

“Yes, sah,” said one negro, “a friend of mine who knows all about it says dis heah man Edison has done gone and invented a magnetized bullet dat can’t miss a German, kase ef dere’s one in a hundred yards de bullet is drawn right smack against his steel helmet. Yes, sah, an’ he’s done invented another one with a return attachment. Whenever dat bullet don’t hit nothin’ it comes right straight back to de American lines.”

“Dat’s what I call inventin’,” exclaimed his colored listener. “But how about dem comin’-back bullets? What do dey do to keep ’em from hittin’ ouah men when dey come back?”

“Well, Mr. Edison made ’em so he’s got ’em trained. You don’t s’pose he’d let ’em kill any Americans, do you? No, sah. He’s got ’em fixet so’s dey jes’ ease back down aroun’ de gunner’s feet an’ sort o’ say: ‘Dey’s all dead in dat trench, boss. Send me to a live place where I’se got a chancet to do somethin’.’”

SUCH EXCUSES AS THEY MAKE

A soldier was brought up for stealing his trench bunkie’s liquor.

“I’m sorry, sor,” he said. “But I put the liquor for the two of us in the same bottle. Mine was at the bottom, an’ I was obliged to drink his to get mine.”

HE HAD TROUBLES, TOO

At a church adjacent to a big military camp a service was recently held for soldiers only.

“Let all you brave fellows who have troubles stand up,” shouted the preacher.

Instantly every man rose except one.

“Ah!” exclaimed the preacher, peering at this lone individual. “You are one in a thousand.”

“It ain’t that,” piped back the only man who had remained seated, as the rest of his comrades gazed suspiciously at him. “Somebody’s put some cobbler’s wax on the seat, and I’m stuck.”

WHAT COULD HE MEAN?

An army chaplain was trudging along a hot, dusty road with a company of soldiers. As they stopped to rest and to get a drink of water at a farm house the farmer’s wife said to the chaplain:

“You go everywhere the soldiers go, I suppose?”

“No, ma’am,” answered the preacher, “not everywhere; only in this world.”

NEVER MIND THE TARGET

The subject of rifle shooting often crops up at one of the training camps.

“I’ll bet anyone here a box of cigars,” said Lieut. A., “that I can fire twenty-one shots at 200 yards and tell without waiting for the marker the result of each one correctly.”

“Done!” cried Maj. B. And the whole mess turned out early the next morning to witness the experiment.

The lieutenant fired.

“Miss!” he announced calmly.

Another shot.

“Miss!” he repeated.

A third shot.

“Miss!”

“Here, hold on!” put in Maj. B. “What are you trying to do? You’re not firing for the target!”

“Of course not!” was the cool response. “I’m firing for those cigars!”

A LADY FROM HELL

Two “kilties” from the same town met in a rest camp “somewhere in France” and started exchanging confidences.

“Whit like a sendoff did yer wuman gie ye, Sandy, when ye left for France?” asked Jock presently.

Sandy lit a fresh cigaret before he replied frankly:

“Says she, ‘Noo, there’s yer train, Sandy; in ye get, an’ see an’ do yer duty. By jingo, ma mannie, if I thocht ye wed shirk it oot yonder I wud see ye was wounded afore ye gang off.’ That’s the sendoff she gaed me, Jock.”

THEORY VS. FACT

United States Senator Howard Sutherland, of West Virginia, tells a story about a mountain youth who visited a recruiting office in the Senator’s State for the purpose of enlisting in the regular army. The examining physician found the young man as sound as a dollar, but that he had flat feet.

“I’m sorry,” said the physician, “but I’ll have to turn you down. You’ve got flat feet.”

The mountaineer looked sorrowful. “No way for me to git in it, then?” he inquired.

“I guess not. With those flat feet of yours you wouldn’t be able to march even five miles.”

The youth from the mountains studied a moment. Finally he said: “I’ll tell you why I hate this so darned bad. You see, I walked nigh on to one hundred and fifty miles over the mountains to git here, and gosh, how I hate to walk back!”

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIER!

Two men went to the Y. M. C. A. director in one of the camps and said that they were in the habit of kneeling down and saying their prayers at home. What ought they to do here?

“Try it out,” was the advice.

They did; the second night two others in the barracks joined them; the third night a few more; gradually the number increased until considerably more than half the men resumed the habit of childhood and knelt by their cots in prayer before turning in.

A company captain in one of the cantonments the first evening his men stood at attention for retreat said: “Men, this is a serious business we are engaged in; it is fitting that we should pray about it.” There and then this Plattsburg Reserve officer made a simple and earnest prayer for the divine blessing upon their lives and their work. The impression upon the men was described as tremendous. Such incidents indicate the general spirit of the new armies.

WHO WAS THE JOKE ON?

They are telling the story in London taprooms of a German soldier who laughed uproariously all the time he was being flogged. When the officer, at the end, inquired the cause of the private’s mirth, the latter broke into a fresh fit of laughter and cried:

“Why, I’m the wrong man!”

REAL YANKEE LANGUAGE

A French soldier who came proudly up to an American in a certain headquarters town the other day asked:

“You spik French?”

“Nope,” answered the American, “not yet.”

The Frenchman smiled complacently.

“Aye spik Eengleesh,” he said. The American grinned and the Frenchman looked about for some means to show his prowess in the foreign tongue. At that moment a French girl, very neat and trim in her peaked hat, long coat, and high laced boots, came along. The Frenchman jerked his head toward her, looked knowingly at the American, and said triumphantly: “Chicken.”

The American roared.

“Shake,” he said, extending his hand. “You don’t speak English; you speak American.”